Author's notes: I want to thank Soldier for the poetry idea in the last chapter. (Sorry for the late acknowledgement.)
It's a quick update this time, but I hope no one gets used to it because I'm really not sure when the next one will be.
Disclaimer: If Bleach was mine, Yoruichi would be at the real Karakura, training Tatsuki and her little gang of Ichigo-ized humans.
Chapter 3: Rank and file
The realization that she was indeed in the past made Soifon look at everything with a sort of wonder and nostalgia. There were the old training grounds, before the new dojo was built on top of it. Here was the tiny koi pond she used to meditate by before they turned the area into a large recreational park, too noisy for her own liking. Just for a moment, the raven-haired shinigami stood by the sakura tree whose branches hung over the pond, dusting it with pink petals. She must have looked odd, slowly running her fingers along the rough bark like that, but the good thing about not being captain anymore was the fact that she had her relative anonymity back. The other troops milling around didn't really care if another black-clad figure was gazing at a plant like it was a long lost friend. They only bothered to look her way when she yelped softly but audibly, having pricked her finger on a splinter.
Tch, that ruined the mood, Soifon scowled and sucked on the injured finger.
Looking at the men and women who had noticed her tiny accident, Soifon spotted a number of faces she had not seen in decades—faces of the people she had sent to their deaths, either as threats to the Seireitei, or more depressingly, as soldiers under her command. She found herself unable to meet the gazes of the people in the latter category.
Although she wasn't as close to any of them as she was to Yoruichi, she did care about them. It was hard to believe, especially since she seemed so cold and cruel, saying things like, 'Death awaits the weak,' and so on. But she only antagonized her subordinates so that they could become stronger like she did when Yoruichi left. Besides, on particularly bad days when entire squadrons were killed on ill-planned missions, only those words fooled her long enough so she can fall asleep, and that alone made them valuable. With those words firmly in mind, she could wake up the next day in the best condition to make the decisions that would prevent the mishap from happening again. Such was the responsibility of a captain.
Soifon sighed, slightly relieved. Well, with this time traveling issue and all, maybe I have a little more time before I have to face that again... if I even get to be a captain again.
That caveat brought the scowl back to her face. Clearly, there were advantages to being just another soldier in the rank and file. But not being a captain for now was one thing. Never reclaiming the deserved rank was another.
Things were definitely going to change; she would make sure of it. Aizen would be stopped. Yoruichi would not leave. There was a very real possibility that she would have to stay in the shadows and forego the titles she had long gotten used to in order to bring about, or as a consequence of, these events. For the fulfillment of those critical goals, she would do it. However, that didn't mean she would like it.
When Soifon arrived at the mess hall, she saw her burly male counterparts hungrily emptying the serving pots and piling the food onto their plates. She quickly made her way to the end of the line, ruefully thinking that it had been a while since she had to cue for anything, let alone other people's leavings. It was just another reminder of what she had lost and most likely would be giving up for good.
Her mind was beginning to drift off to recall reports, to craft plans and—honestly—to brood, when the men started bowing and moving away from the table. The tiny ex-captain peered through the spaces between the large bodies and spotted a slightly tousled crop of purple hair. Yoruichi was grinning in her direction, no longer donning the haori, but instead wearing her ridiculous orange jacket over her Onmitsukidou uniform.
Soifon chuckled softly. Only she could pull off such an outfit. And only she could cheer her up so effortlessly, even unintentionally, from the funk she had descended into from thinking about her old subordinates and her lost captaincy.
Not to mention she shooed the men off in time to leave me the last piece of fish, she mused happily.
As they all began eating, the commander sat beside her as she was wont to do whenever she decided to grace her subordinates with her presence at dinner. Having the chance to observe the woman up close made Soifon wonder how much she actually remembered Yoruichi from the time before they were reunited—before she was freed from the burdens of her names and titles only to bear the weight of knowing about Soul Society's true traitors. How much had she twisted the facts so that she could hate the woman and ease the pain of her loss? More importantly, how much had she romanticized her memories of Yoruichi in her times of weakness and loneliness?
Probably a lot, she smirked as she watched her captain through the corner of her eyes. Yoruichi was shoveling rice into her mouth at a disconcerting pace, white grains flying and sticking and falling, food picked off of Soifon's plate only to reappear just before it passed through her lips.
Eating habits aside, there were a lot of admirable things about Yoruichi, like her strength, her intelligence, her beauty. But at that moment, Soifon realized that the most admirable thing about her was how much she hadn't changed despite her undeserved fall from grace and how she seemed untouched by bitterness. Yoruichi still smirked the same way, still teased anyone and everyone as much as she possibly could, still laughed as often. Oh yes, and she still shoveled her food into her mouth as if nothing but the meal mattered—as if Aizen wasn't about to end the world and as if it didn't fall on her to do something about it…
Well, not this Yoruichi, but the one from the future, now her past.
Soifon knew she changed tremendously over the century in which Yoruichi was missing. Where there was once a fairly amiable, devoted and determined soldier, there was now a cold, strict and determined captain—some things, of course, never changed. The things that did change, however, were going to make it difficult for her to keep her time origins secret. What would Yoruichi think if her puppy of a protégé had disappeared for good, replaced by this hardened and embittered bitch? Would she even believe her story? She would-
"Soifon? Soifooon…" Yoruichi called in a singsong voice as she waved an ebony hand vigorously just a little more than an inch away from Soifon's nose.
Soifon jerked in her seat, nearly smacking her face into Yoruichi's hand in her surprise.
"Y-Yoruichi-sama!" she cried. It was a good thing that none of future Yoruichi's efforts had erased her deeply ingrained tendency to regard her with respect. Imagine how suspicious the captain would be if the young Fon, the stickler for protocol and propriety, started calling her by her first name and her first name alone.
"You were in a faraway land for a moment there," Yoruichi teased.
Try 'a time now gone' or 'never to be', Soifon mentally corrected. Huh, that was sort of confusing.
"Sorry, Yoruichi-sama. I was just-"
"Eh, don't worry about it. I just wanted to warn you that if you don't start eating now, you may just find your plate empty and your tummy growling. And we can't have that when we start training later."
As if she wasn't the one emptying my plate in the first place…
Wait, did she just say' training'?
"Right," Soifon said as she started picking the fish apart with her chopsticks. "What are we doing for training again?" she asked, thinking this was her chance to gauge what skill level she was supposed to have at this point.
"Oh, Soifon, I wish you wouldn't ask me that question over and over again. I know you're excited about achieving your shikai, but if I have to explain one more time what we'll be doing this time-"
"Ah, I'm sorry, Yoruichi-sama," Soifon interrupted since she had received the information she needed. She could vaguely remember what her abilities were like when she was training for shikai. "I just meant to ask when we were training and where."
The dark-skinned woman clicked her tongue in amusement. "Tsk, tsk, tsk, you're too young to be so forgetful. We'll meet in my office at 7:30 pm, then we'll go to the forest so we're hidden from prying eyes just in case you do achieve shikai. Don't want everyone to know about your trump card, after all."
Briefly forgetting her cover, Soifon noted the unspoken doubt with the slightest hint of disbelief. "In case I achieve shikai?"
"Oh-ho? Feeling cocky, are we?" Yoruichi raised a finely sculpted brow. "You're talented and I believe in your ability to achieve shikai. But younger shinigami like you don't usually get it on their third try." She ruffled Soifon's now-shoulder length hair affectionately.
The girl blushed a deep red, and instinctively bowed beneath her mistress' hand. Not even traveling a century forward and back cured her of the embarrassing automatic reaction.
Puppy.
There was a tiny part of Soifon that wondered if it was right to take advantage of her advanced skills and knowledge of the future for such a selfish purpose, and another tiny part that worried about the kind of repercussions these small indulgences would have on the progress of this timeline. But the bigger part—the part that had always looked up to this goddess amongst man—just wanted to impress the woman and make her proud.
Besides, I very well can't keep Suzumebachi a secret when much of my fighting style depends on Nigeki Kessatsu.
Or so she tried to justify.
Puppy.
"Oh, I think today's the day, Yoruichi-sama. I really think today's the day I'll finally get it."